Word: claudia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Antonioni has created a brilliantly coherent study of a girl trying to orient herself in a circle of friends who range from the comparatively normal to the very unstable. Claudia (Monica Vitti) is an emotional, rich, over-sexed, unattached blonde Italian bombshell who maintains a strange integrity even while entering an affair with her closest friend's fiance...
...tradesy eye on his congregation, Dino is going to make the film in English, dubbing it in Italian. Who will the actors be? "Everybody," says Dino. It is easy to imagine Van Johnson munching an apple offered him by Anita Ekberg, Frank Sinatra slinging stones at Jackie Gleason, Claudia Cardinale holding Laurence Olivier's head on a platter. No one has actually been cast yet, but two are all but certain to appear: Anthony Quinn, who has done some of his best work in De Laurentiis films (La Strada), and beautiful, languorous Silvana Mangano, who married Dino soon after...
...Claudia Cardinale is the Girl, with a chest the size of the Suitcase. First, let's get one thing straight: an actress she ain't. Here entire dramatic technique consists of three actions...
Sandro is discounted by Antioni's contempt; Anna disappears; Antioni never gives much attention to either the featherbrained Julia or the calm Patrizia. Only claudia is left. And because she alone remains at the end of the film, the audience must wonder if the story is only that the slob has caught another chick. In the despairing Lo Dolce Vita, this would be the message. But the essential distinction is that things are not the same at the end as they were in the beginning. Claudia has changed, as has Anna if she lives, as has Julia. L'Avventura...
...story is obscured by brilliant photography that makes the viewer concentrate on scenes rather than continuity, but the camera work has an expressive clarity and nightmare emotional intensity which speaks even more clearly than the script. It is this visual language, more than words, which says that Sandro sees Claudia as just a new adventure. But the same language portrays emotional tone so clearly that the film's message is clearly lodged in Claudia's changing attitude...